Medicate
by Make A Choice. Shine On
Summary: About a year after the fall, John is approached by a group of scientists who are developing an experimental drug. The drug is purported to bring Sherlock back to life - though only in his mind. Two-Shot.
1. Chapter 1

Grey.

Grey walls. Grey room. Grey windows. Grey world.

Back in Afghanistan, the battlefield had made itself too vivid to be ignored. Blazing heat, bursting colours, an environment constantly in turmoil with itself.

The crime scenes had been much the same way, except that they kept their liveliness hidden. Buried in the details that only he could uncover. At every scene of gruesome brutality, there was a subtle beauty that he brought out to play. He painted invisible masterpieces.

But his blood on the pavement had painted the world back to grey, permanently.

It was getting harder and harder to tell the difference between days. John knew Tuesday when it came around because it was the only day that he had contact with the outside world. It was the only day he had to deal with the outside world's mediocrity.

Always the same questions, same answers, same advice.

"You haven't abandoned your blog, have you?"

"There's nothing to write about. Just like before.

"There are things, if you look for them. You should keep writing. It's good for you."

Why bother looking if I know I'll find nothing?

Nothing.

Only he knew where to find those things.

"You're thinking and not sharing again."

His eyes shot up, ice cold but melting. "Yeah. Funny thing is, they're my thoughts," he snapped. Then he stormed out of the session for the third time that month. Outside the office building the ice dissolved all at once and trickled down his face and scorched it with shame.

He tried so hard. He always tried so hard not to cry. Thank god for the rain.

That night, like every other night, he sat in front of his laptop and tried to write a blog entry.

I hate my therapist. Yes, you, Ella, since I'm forcing myself to write this just for you. It's nothing personal. You just don't understand. You don't understand that he was everything. You don't understand that I

That entry was left unfinished and added to the endless repository of drafts, all of which ended similarly.

He lay in bed long before the sun went down and pondered at how empty it was. Empty bed, empty room, empty world. All colour drained. A flat that once had a personality of its own, a story unlike any other, now diluted to a murky grey.

* * *

A grey room with stark white lights. Not the flat. Someplace he'd never been before.

He'd been approached on the way back from the therapist that day by a man in a pristine suit, bursting with zeal for his cause. "Excuse me, sir. I've got an indispensable offer for you."

"No thank you."

"It's an offer sent directly from the field of science. Highly personalized, just for you, Dr. Watson. A group of the most renowned graduates from the Science Division of Oxford have-"

"Wait, how do you know my name?"

"Like I said, Dr.-"

"You know what, nevermind. I don't care. I'm not interested."

At that point the man stopped walking and said, "We believe we can bring Sherlock back to you."

John halted in his tracks. His right hand clenched into a fist at his side. The other rose to point an accusing finger as he turned to face the man and uttered, "If you think this is funny, you're a damn sick bastard."

The man only stared back cheerfully. "I assure you this offer is sincere. Allow us to take you back to headquarters so we can explain the project in detail."

That was when John noticed the slick black car parked against the curb, and he couldn't help but recognize that Sherlock would have noticed it from the very beginning. Stupid.

It could still easily be a scam. The car could take him to a dark alley on the outskirts of town. They could knock him out partway there and have him wake to a bloodstained basement. They could beat him, rape him, torture him, murder him; they could do any number of horrible things for their own sick pleasure, as people do.

Or they could bring Sherlock back to him. And that - that single, minute possibility - was enough to make it worth the risk.

Without another thought, John approached the car and got in.

They took him to a tall building in one of the shadier areas of London. It was still daytime, but there were no streetlights. The entire block looked abandoned, including the building whose faded metal door they led him to. There was an elaborate series of locks that involved both physical keys and fingerprints from two of the men that had accompanied him there. Everything in John's head screamed at him to run.

Instead, he remembered what awaited him at home, and stepped through the doorway. The lights flicked on all the way toward the end of the hall, and it was revealed that the battered exterior betrayed everything that lay hidden inside. This was a place of science, without a doubt.

The grey room was several stories up. They encountered no one else on the way there except the young men and women in medical uniforms who stood in special windowed rooms, bent over their work, attention undivided. John never managed a good enough glance to determine what exactly they were bent over.

His escorts told him to sit down and make himself comfortable. One offered him a mint, which he cautiously rejected. One pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and mumbled something. Half a minute later, a man in a white lab coat stalked through the door and sat down on the other side of the table. "Langdon Faust," he introduced in a cold voice, offering his hand and a contrarily charismatic smile. John shook it. The scientist pulled something out of his coat pocket, set it in the center of the table - a small green pill - and sat perched forward in his seat expectantly.

"What is that?" John finally asked.

"That," remarked Langdon, beaming. "Is the most powerful psychostimulant ever made."

"I see. And what does it do?"

"It makes your memories come to life."

An intriguing idea, but its efficacy depended on what Langdon meant by 'life'. John didn't want them digging Sherlock's dead body out of the ground and resurrecting him like a real-life Frankenstein. Neither did he want an amoeba that he could look at through a magnifying glass while it complained and made deductions at him. Despite all the raw pain biting at his chest, John sniggered.

"Something funny?"

"Not at all."

"It's alright. You fellows always doubt us at first."

"I'm not the only one, then? I thought this offer was highly personalized."

"It is. It's the drug itself that personalizes the experience."

"Care to elucidate?"

"In simple terms, the drug examines your memories and recreates them in real time. It searches for the one thing you've lost that was most important to you, and then takes all the information it can about this thing and transforms it into a phantasm that will blend into the present world. This phantasm learns and grows and has memories just like any living, breathing person - if it is, in fact, a person. In your case I have no doubt it is the famous Sherlock Holmes."

John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. So they had only done a surface check on him. It was the drug which would know everything. It was the drug which would have unrestricted access to his mind and the things it produced.

"We call this drug PHENICS. Perception Has Everything Needed In the Creation of Sentience."

John took the pill between two fingers and held it up in the light. "So you're telling me that if I take this pill, the most annoying, sarcastic, and impossibly intelligent arsehole who ever lived will spontaneously appear in this room and act as if he were alive?"

"Well if you took that pill right now, it would do nothing except give you a slight buzz. The process requires an initial injection."

"And if I had the injection?"

"Then yes. Within a couple of hours, your mind would recreate Sherlock Holmes."

"That's ridiculous."

"Care to try?"

The scientist smiled and suddenly John felt as though the universe were watching him, waiting for him to make the right choice, waiting for him to reject an obviously illegal narcotic, because he had never been desperate enough to fall victim to the appeal of such a deplorable thing before.

But looking past the man's shoulder he could almost imagine Sherlock standing there, kneading the pill between two fingers, holding it up to his nose and tongue to see if he could determine any of the ingredients, muttering "fascinating" under his breath.

God, he wanted to see it with his own eyes.

"What is this pill made of?"

"I'm afraid that information is classified."

"Any dangerous side effects?"

"Any number of them. None reported so far."

"So far?"

"This is still an experimental drug, Dr. Watson. We need opportune candidates like you to test it out for a few more months until it's ready for commercial sale on the black market."

"I'm a test subject?"

"I wouldn't put it so harshly. The test subjects have already served their purpose. You are simply double-checking for mistakes."

Well, at least that meant the drug would be free.

Langdon gestured at one of the other men, who pulled a packet of papers out of a cabinet and handed them over. He set the stapled packet on the table, facing John. "If you choose to accept the offer, you'll need to sign off responsibility for anything that happens while under the effect or caused by the effects of the drug, knowledge of the dangers, and consent to participate in all parts of the program for as long as you or I see fit."

"I'm allowed out whenever I want?"

"Of course. All I ask is that you don't go blabbing to the authorities if something displeases or otherwise maims you. Agreement of confidentiality is outlined on the fourth page."

The scientist flashed him a smile that suddenly looked borderline sadistic. John stared at the papers. Signing these would be putting his life in the hands of a bunch of scientific maniacs. It would be the stupidest action he'd taken in the length of his uneventful life, besides running for the flat unaccompanied when he'd been told of Mrs. Hudson's supposed attack.

Then again, what was his life worth now that it wasn't needed to document the adventures of the greatest man who ever lived?

Sherlock would have castigated him for referring to his cases that way.

To hell with it, he thought, bending over the papers to read them through. It wouldn't hurt just to try it, and even if it did, it wouldn't matter much. He was helping the cause of science, right?

But behind that, behind all the surface reasons that he didn't stand up and walk out of the place right then, he was driven by desperation. He wanted Sherlock back. He wanted Sherlock back more than he'd ever wanted anything, and somehow he still hadn't accepted that it wasn't possible.

By the time he reached the end of the packet he wasn't even skimming the words. He could have signed all his belongings over and agreed to a lobotomy. He didn't care. The final signature was his last act of volition. When they took him to the medical wing and stuck the needle in his arm they might as well have sucked his soul out of him. He didn't feel like John Watson anymore.

"We'll take you home to get some rest. You might feel on-and-off bouts of drowsiness during the first week. We'll visit every Tuesday at five in the evening to deliver the pill; please be present. If all goes well, your friend will be there when you wake up."

Langdon Faust flashed his smile again, and everything afterward faded to a grainy blur.

* * *

When John first awoke he had forgotten everything. The room was empty just like he expected it be, the world outside the window dark and cold. His phone screen flashed half past midnight.

The lamp in the other room was on. He wouldn't have noticed if his bedroom door was closed, like it usually was. He could have sworn he'd turned it off, but, he couldn't remember turning it on in the first place...

Sherlock.

John vaulted out of bed and through the doorframe, heart pounding, his chest colliding with the closest armchair. He was more scared than he'd ever been in his life. More scared than the first time he almost died in Afghanistan - as if the bullet had actually hit the mark, but passed through without causing any damage.

Sherlock glanced up from where he was sitting on the sofa, newspaper in hand. Pale wrists, navy blue nightrobe, angular shoulders, full lips. Eyes piercing and judgemental and questioning all at once. High definition. Real life.

"Honestly, John, there are more civilized ways to react to a bad dream."

His voice, in person, cut through the fear and kept going, until everything keeping John together most days was lost. He collapsed sobbing against the side of the armchair, refusing to blink, and there Sherlock sat with his brows furrowed in consternation.

"Was it really that bad?" he asked.

The newspaper went back to the table. Blue silk brushed the floor all the way to John's feet and warm hands enveloped him, thick black hair caressing his cheek. There had been times like this before, maybe twice, when Sherlock found him by accident. They were the only times he openly cared, perhaps because he valued John's mental health.

"Sod you," John said, when he was just stable enough to be coherent.

"What?"

"Come back. Please come back."

"I'm right here. What are you talking about?"

"You're dead."

"John."

"You're not real."

"John, look at me."

"You're a fucking drug!"

"JOHN!" His voice broke into panic. "LOOK. AT. ME!"

John's vision came back into focus. He was already looking, directly into Sherlock's eyes, and he saw fear.

"Oh god," he said. "I'm sorry. I-"

Sherlock's suffocating grip on his arms slackened. The pain where his nails cut in was real. The concern in his face made John's chest physically ache. It was a rare thing. So rare it was scary when it appeared. John never wanted to be the cause of that fear.

"It was just a bad dream," he said half-heartedly.

After a moment, Sherlock stood up, holding out his hand. By the time John was on his feet, both of them had regained their composure. "You should do us both a favor and stop having those," Sherlock said. Then he moved back to the couch to pick up where he'd left off.

John's eyes never left him.

He walked to the side of the couch, just for the sake of being closer. He laid his hand on the silk. "Sherlock, could you...?"

What could he say? Sherlock, could you hold my hand to make me feel better? Sherlock, could you lay next to me and help me sleep? Sherlock, could you just pay a little bit of attention to me, you know, since you've been dead this past year?

"I have to use the bathroom."

He was up and gone in seconds. Immediately afterward, John heard Mrs. Hudson's meager footsteps on the stairs. She was in her bedclothes, looking worried.

"John? Was that you shouting?"

"Yeah, sorry, I was just..." He paused to consider the fact that Sherlock was still dead, especially in the minds of Mrs. Hudson and the general public. "It was a bad dream. Sorry to wake you."

"Don't worry about me, dear. Are you sure you're alright? Do you need company?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

The dubious look on her face gave away her concern. It had grown as the days went on, and as John's symptoms became more obvious. The locked doors, the late nights, the dark eyes, the gaunt skin. With every week he spent alone, depression set itself further in. It wasn't anything unfamiliar, but it was much worse than it had ever been before. It was caused by a much more permanent reason. A reason much closer to his heart.

"If you need anything, dear, - anything at all - you just call me over." She wanted to say more. Instead she afforded one last wary glance and scuffled back down the stairway.

Sherlock emerged from the bathroom and resumed his perusing of the local papers. His return had been almost instantaneous upon Mrs. Hudson's departure.

It made sense. This Sherlock existed only in John's mind, so he could not coincide with the presence of others.

John sat in the armchair opposite and watched, knowing that Sherlock wasn't paying any attention to him. That distant look was in his eyes that indicated his state of reverie, where his time passed on its own stream and everyone else was lost to oblivion. Eventually he reached the final page and took the violin up from the shelf, where it'd lay untouched since he'd last played it, and stood by the window composing his thoughts.

There was so much that John wanted to say, wanted to ask - things that had been bothering him for months on end. Instead he sat silently and watched the dead man live, simply for how impossible it was.

He hadn't realized just how clearly he could remember Sherlock, just how many aspects his memory had stored, even down to the smallest details. He'd had no idea that every melody the old violin had ever played in his presence would stay locked away, perfectly in tune, to be recreated now with such a strong aura of nostalgia it was suffocating.

So John watched throughout the night, enthralled by the vividity of his perception.

* * *

Much to John's dismay, Mike Stamford decided to drop by the following morning for a little chat. It was the first time John had seen him in almost two years.

"I heard about Sherlock. It's tragic, isn't it? Through all that time living with him did you ever think he was a fraud?"

"He's been gone for a year," John said, leaving the final question unanswered.

The portly man's ears turned from pale to bright pink, though he didn't give any outward indication of his guilt. "I didn't want to interrupt, you know, since it's always hard at first. I figured you wouldn't want to be bothered by everyone's condolences all at once."

John stared gravely at him. It was always hard at first?

"I brought you this cookie tin. Got it at a little promotion one of the fraternities was doing and thought you might have better use for it than I. They're very good."

"Appreciate it," John gritted out. Because nothing says I'm sorry for the loss of your best friend like a half-eaten store-bought cookie tin.

Suddenly his head began to hurt.

"Are you alright, mate?"

He had his fingers on his temples, eyes clenched shut against the pain. It was like a distorted shockwave passing through his brain, making everything blur, creating a ring in his ears that he could feel more than he could hear. Perhaps some sort of resistance against the drug's prying chemicals, which were no doubt surging through his cerebral veins already, destroying everything natural to achieve its own purposes.

The affliction passed, and then John just felt very tired.

"Yeah, sorry. Headache," he uttered, pulling his hands from his face.

"You look like you didn't sleep at all last night."

"I didn't."

From the increasingly hostile tone of John's voice, Stamford finally caught on to the unwelcome nature of his presence. He braced himself to stand. "Right. Well. I should let you get some sleep, then."

"Kind of you to visit."

"Not a problem. Take care of yourself, John. I wouldn't want to hear of another death on Baker Street."

John slammed the front door on Stamford's well-intentioned chortling. Horrible joke. Horrible, horrible joke.

As he started back up toward his room, he heard the front door open and close a second time behind him.

"Solved the case already?"

"It was solved the moment they put the report in my hands. Lestrade made it sound interesting on the phone; of course he had it all wrong." The detective brushed past, coat billowing, vaulting up the stairway three steps at a time.

"I suppose you assumed you wouldn't need my help."

"As you know, John, your accompaniment on my cases is much more of a psychological stimulus than a source of substantive assistance."

"Either way, you didn't invite me."

Sherlock didn't answer. He couldn't invite John, not now that the cases weren't real. Although Sherlock was back, the adventure wasn't. The re-creation of everything this man represented was incomplete.

John didn't care if the real Sherlock was a fraud. This drug clearly endeavored to bring back the genius detective he had known for those eighteen months, and it was unacceptably failing. That Sherlock had been nearly inseparable from him. That Sherlock had insisted upon his company as an absolute necessity to every case.

It was something that John never fully understood. He just knew that it was, and the chemical infiltrators in PHENICS had failed to pick up on it.

* * *

They spent their days at home much like they had before Sherlock's death, besides the crucial component of crime-solving. The blog remained untouched. John couldn't decide whether going to work was a nuisance or a relief, because it took him away from the false image of Sherlock.

Some part of his mind - the smidgen that still cared for his own well-being - was sending out warning signals, and they became more urgent with every touch, every stare, every conversation. Every interaction that brought him closer to believing that this Sherlock could suffice. Not that he was the real thing, but that he almost was. That he, even though it was impossible, had a sentience.

John knew with utmost surety that it was impossible. He had a firm grasp on the fact that every aspect of this Sherlock was a figment of his own imagination.

Yet his emotions were real, and they were forming an addiction.

Not long ago, John Watson was a broken man who had just returned from war. The war had not broken him. The discharge had. He lay trapped in a grey room without the turbulence to keep his spirit awake.

Then Sherlock Holmes came and woke him up, and he stayed awake for eighteen months.

Then Sherlock Holmes died.

And John lost the prescription he needed to get through the horrid disease of life.

This man, who looked like Sherlock and acted like Sherlock but wasn't Sherlock, was offering him a renewed prescription, except this one was labeled: PHENICS, Maker Unknown, Ingredients Classified.

John supposed the description wasn't much different from before, except for the fancy acronym.

* * *

It was the mornings that disconcerted him most. When he was laying alone trying to accept another day of reality and he suddenly remembered Sherlock, there was an utterly overwhelming feeling of dislocation that pervaded everything and never left, though he got used to it eventually, as one might a stale fragrance.

He questioned how he could believe in anything if he couldn't believe in the man in the next room, who seemed just as real as anyone else and then even more so.

John went out into the living room for tea and pretended everything was alright. He thought he was alone. Then Sherlock walked past in front of the coffee table, appearing like a ghost, and remarked, "Those cookies are quite tasty. Have you tried them?"

"I haven't."

He tried one, later. The taste was familiar, which seemed strange considering he had never eaten those type of cookies before. They were, in fact, rather tasty.

There was empty space in the corner of the cookie tin where there hadn't been before. Sherlock had eaten those.

That was impossible.

* * *

When John arrived home from the therapist the following Tuesday, the black car was waiting on the curb. A young woman with short dark hair got out and handed him a small grey pouch. Through the plastic he could feel the outline of the pill.

"I have to watch you take it," she said. "Need a glass of water?"

John felt slightly offended by the implication that he might be a pill-popper.

"Yes, of course I do," he responded, tearing open the plastic. A man in the backseat rolled down the window and handed him a glass.

"Have you experienced any strange side effects, any glitches?" the woman asked, as he was swallowing the pill.

"Nothing I wasn't warned about."

"How's Holmes? All that you hoped he would be?"

"Yes. Everything's great, thank you. I have a quick question."

"I'll do my best to answer."

"When he interacts with objects in the flat, moves things..."

"You are the one actually responsible for moving them."

"Because he doesn't have a physical body. When I touch him, my mind creates the illusion of corporeality."

"Precisely. When Holmes affects something in the environment, the drug programs your subconscious to carry out the task which will make perception and reality agree later on. If he moves an object from one place to another, at some point you will unconsciously move the actual object to the place your mind believes it to be. This prevents glitches; for example, your mate coming over later and grabbing what appears to be empty air."

"So at any given moment, when I think I'm having a nice relaxing sit, I could actually be moving around the flat rearranging things."

"Correct."

"That's a bit eerie."

"Only if you think about it too hard." The woman smiled and, as John was staring at the ground trying to adapt himself to the concept, got back in the passenger seat. "Cheerio."

The black car pulled away and John went inside. Sherlock was upstairs throwing knives at the wall, complaining about how bored he was. The marks were still there the next day, vicious and splintering and utterly real.

* * *

John stopped going to the therapist, and the questions came from Mrs. Hudson instead. Would you like me to take this extra cup to the sink for you? Where did those holes in the wall come from? Have you noticed that the flat hasn't been this messy since Sherlock lived in it? Were you just talking to yourself? Are you alright, John? Has someone knocked your head recently? Why do you keep making two cups of tea?

The tipping point was when she came up to check on John around dinnertime and walked in on a fully-laid table for two. She was still standing flummoxed in the doorway when John emerged from the kitchen with an open bottle of wine, looking much more cheery than he had in months. He hadn't seen her.

"The nice girl at the bakery? I thought you said she was devoutly Catholic," he said, glancing up at an invisible man beside the table. Suddenly he burst into laughter.

"My god, Sherlock. Thoughts that rude can be heard a mile away. It's a wonder you managed to walk through the door of that place, let alone leave having acquired half the contents of the display window for free."

He was still sniggering joyously by the time Mrs. Hudson walked back down the stairs, fully convinced that John Watson had gone insane and there was nothing she could do about it.

"The churchgoers greatly enjoyed my offering," Sherlock continued, grinning as he sat down. "It's too bad that every slice of bread they ate that day came from a whore's oven."

John laughed and laughed, and kept smiling as he poured the wine, and so it was that three months had passed living with the imaginary replica of Sherlock Holmes.

But that was one of the rare days where John could not only pretend but believe that everything was alright. Most days he was torn between Sherlock is here, be happy and Sherlock is here, but he's not. Most days he was just as unhappy as he was before, but he kept taking the pill, for the cause of science (or so he told himself).

He kept pretending in the hopes that he could eventually trick himself into believing all the time, and live at peace.

* * *

Once he came home to see Sherlock sitting on the sofa with his laptop perched on his knees. His laptop. Before John had a chance to protest, Sherlock said, "That you what?"

"What?"

John looked past him at the screen. It was his blog; he must have left it open by accident. Sherlock was reading through the drafts.

At first, John was furious.

"Nobody gave you permission to look at those."

"No, I gave myself permission. Clearly."

Then John remembered that this Sherlock wasn't real, and everything changed. He could say all the things that he wanted to say and it wouldn't matter, because this Sherlock only appeared to care. Nothing had true consequences because Sherlock was him, his mind, his manipulation of memories.

John let go and said it, for the first time in his entire life, verbal or otherwise.

"That I love you. After all the time I spent denying it, the world was right all along. It just took a damn lot for me to realize it."

The detective gave that deep, bewildered look, the one that appeared when he was trying to sort out a particularly convoluted mystery. "You love me how?"

"This world is unbearable without you."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Well..." John looked away toward the nothingness out the window. "Sometimes I'm not sure myself."

Sherlock didn't answer, so John went to his room and didn't come out for the rest of the night.

* * *

It was hard, having that confession in the air and not receiving any reaction to it, though John supposed he should have expected that from Sherlock. Daily life went on as usual. It didn't mean anything to fake Sherlock and it wouldn't have meant anything to the real one.

Nevertheless, John wished he would have had the chance to tell him.

He hadn't visited the cemetery in a long time. Not since he'd started taking the drug. It felt weird, standing before the headstone of the man he'd left at home not long before. He had to close his eyes and remember that none of it was real, which sliced his heart with the red hot agony that he hadn't felt since he'd witnessed the fall. Somewhere along the line he had started to forget, to accept, to be happy again.

"I feel like a right idiot," he said. "I've got myself caught up in something so outrageously immoral, I'm not sure if you'd be fascinated or appalled. I should have rejected PHENICS. I knew how wrong it was from the start. Just- I couldn't."

He crouched down and laid his hand on the marble, bowing his head, trying to connect with whatever was lingering there, if there was anything, because this was important. "I love you. That's all."

It was several minutes before he stood and left. He'd felt nothing. Sherlock Holmes had abandoned him at some point, whether it was the moment his mortal life ended or the first moment that John looked at the false Sherlock with genuine adoration.

When he arrived home, false Sherlock was braced against the side of the staircase with his shirt covered in blood. "John- assistance," he uttered breathlessly, one hand laid against his side. It was clear that the wound was painful but not dangerous.

"What is all this?" John asked coldly. No reaction, no remorse.

"I chased a man into gang turf. His friend had a knife. I took the slice so that I could snatch the gun from the other one before he shot my brains out. Now- assistance."

"Why aren't you in the hospital?"

"I hate the hospital and you do a better job for free. John, now."

"You're a bloody nuisance, you know that?"

"For god's sake, John, what is wrong with you tonight?"

"Nothing's wrong with me; what's wrong with you?"

"I nearly died and I am asking my doctor for medical assistance."

"You're causing me unnecessary trouble, damn it, you're not even r-" John halted mid-sentence, nevertheless moving past Sherlock toward the nearest bathroom. The man followed behind him furiously.

"Not even what? Not real? I nearly died and you're still going on about that stupid dream you had."

"It wasn't a dream! It's the truth, it's-" John cut off swearing. He was mixing reality with the wonderful deception the drug created, and he'd sworn to himself never to do that again. It would taint the illusion.

"It's a dream, John! I am real! I am bleeding!" In the bathroom Sherlock tore his bloodstained shirt off to expose the glistening gash beneath. "Since you love me, shouldn't you be helping me? Couldn't you just kiss me to figure out for yourself how real I am?!"

John stopped and stared at him in shock. It seemed he understood, to some extent, the way sentiments worked in ordinary people. He recognized the relationship between physical touch and visceral belief, which was the strongest type of belief; if John's logical mind would not believe him, his emotional mind would.

Sherlock got fed up and pulled John by the collar to his lips. The kiss was hard and cold and momentary, yet there must have been something behind it, because John's heart believed so strongly it wanted to beat straight out of his chest. He opened the cabinet and fumbled with every supply he tried to pull out.

Eventually the wound was properly tended to, and they sat on either side of the dining table in silence.

While John was busy looking anywhere besides Sherlock's eyes, Sherlock was staring directly at him. Finally he said, "What happened that made you come home acting like a menopausal woman going through divorce?"

"None of your business."

"It is my business. I could have bled to death."

"It's none of your business."

"You came from the cemetery."

John didn't bother trying to figure out how that was deduced.

"Who died?" Sherlock asked, and John's gaze shot up at him, glossy and blank, thinly concealing the secret that this Sherlock could never know. Then he stood up and went to bed, where he didn't sleep until early morning.

* * *

John had come to some conclusions that night which he did not intend to keep to himself. When he came out, his imaginary flatmate was lounging on the couch reading a book about different types of garden soil.

"Sherlock."

No acknowledgement, so John snatched the book out of his hands.

"Sherlock."

"That was very rude."

"What you did yesterday- Don't do it again."

"It's hardly my choice whether someone tries to kill me or not."

"No, obviously, not that. In the bathroom, when you, you..."

"I kissed you."

"Yeah. Just keep that nonsense to yourself, alright?"

A look of perplexity came over Sherlock's face. It was objective, as always. He was fazed not by John's sudden disinterest in him but by the suddenness itself, the lack of sense it made. Despite all of John's resolve, that hurt.

"Why?" Sherlock asked.

"I don't know. It's just not right."

Then he realized. "You still don't believe me."

If John happened to have prepared a response for that, he forgot it when he needed it, partly because he hadn't expected Sherlock to figure it out this time and partly because of the close proximity he found himself in seconds later, Sherlock's hand on his jaw and face inches from him.

This time it wasn't hard and cold and momentary. This time there was no rush, no anger, just one moment of pure appreciation that lasted incessantly in John's mind even after they parted, because he had never felt so much like Sherlock actually wanted him there.

When Sherlock waited and John said nothing but stared wide-eyed and defenseless to his own emotions, he backed the doctor against the wall and kissed him again without restraint. John felt Sherlock's tongue tracing his lips and suddenly he no longer cared what was real and what was not.


	2. Part Two

One Tuesday, a long while later, the dark-haired girl did not get out of the black car and ask him questions. It was someone unfamiliar, a man with short blond hair and a grim expression on his face. He had no grey package with him.

"Dr. Watson?"

"That would be me."

"I regret to inform you that PHENICS has been discontinued. We have reason to believe that the law found us and we must evacuate everything as soon as possible."

"Are you relocating?"

"If possible, yes. However, the new headquarters would be very far away. We could not deliver the drug to you."

"No, that's not- That's not okay. What about when you start selling it?"

"If it ever gets to that stage, we'll let you know. The founders want to continue the project but there are a multitude of kinks to be worked out. We don't know how long it will take, and that's if we get the chance to continue."

John's throat went dry. "What about Sherlock? Is he just going to disappear?"

"You probably have one or two more days with him. That's all."

Panic. Don't panic.

"I'm truly sorry, Dr. Watson. If there were any other options, we would take them."

"I'm sure you would."

"Thank you for everything. Your feedback has been of invaluable help."

As the car drove away, John felt himself being crushed by utter helplessness. One day. Two was wishful thinking. He couldn't handle losing Sherlock. Not again.

The addiction had reached its height and he knew that he would only fall back worse than before.

He opened the front door of the flat to see Sherlock bounding toward him down the stairs, obviously in a hurry to go somewhere.

"Please stay home today," John said, not moving from the doorway, though his tone was already one of defeat.

"Now is not the time for dramatics or libido, John, whichever this is. Sometimes I can't tell with you."

"This is important, Sherlock, please."

"This is more important. Move."

"Whatever it is, it can wait. I-"

"No, actually, a man's life depends on this," Sherlock responded, pushing past forcefully now. John put up no fight.

A man's life might very well depend on this, he thought, against his conscious will. Though not an imaginary man's life.

He went inside cursing. Sherlock was gone. Mrs. Hudson happened to be in the other room, and she emerged looking as concerned as she always did these days. "John, dear, do you need help?" she inquired, with extra emphasis on the final word as if she meant something further by it. She must have overheard him talking to himself again.

"Yes, I do need help, damn it, I need-" he started, evoking a jump from the frail lady with his choice of language. It wasn't that that stopped him though. He hadn't even noticed that. It was the statement of confidentiality he had signed a long time ago. He forced a deep breath, fists clenched, and lowered his voice as far as he could manage. "You know what, it's alright. Nevermind. I'll be fine." Then he stalked into his room, slammed the door, and stood back against it genuinely wondering if he could survive a third withdrawal.

* * *

When Sherlock returned late that night John met him with open arms. No explanation, just silent desperation. Thank god he'd come back unharmed. Thank god he'd come back at all.

"Come to bed," he ordered, stepping back to view the man in full measure. By this time he was no longer thinking of what an incredible reproduction his subconscious mind had created. He was thinking of what an incredible man Sherlock Holmes was, in every aspect, even the parts that bothered him the most. "Promise me you won't leave. I want you to be there when I wake up."

"What's happened to you, John?"

"Nothing's happened. Just do this favor for me, alright?"

Sherlock paused, pursing his lips. Something he was afraid to say, or didn't like to say. Maybe both. "Something has happened. I can deduce that, John, but I cannot deduce what you're thinking. Do you understand how infuriating that is?" His fingers curled but John's hand reached them before they could become a fist, and pulled him to bed.

"Yes, it's what the rest of the human race has to deal with."

"What's happened?"

"I'm going to lose you again."

"What are you talking about?"

"Figure it out, genius. Something to entertain you for the night, since you never sleep anyway."

They lay facing each other, arms and legs entwined, and John did not close his eyes. Neither did Sherlock, but he wasn't looking. He was already in a distant place, pretending to stay in touch with reality and forgetting after a while, sifting through evidence that was there but didn't make sense.

An hour later, when John was finally giving in to the grips of sleep, he snapped back and asked, "What did you mean when you said I wasn't real?"

"...What?"

"Was it really a dream, or...was I wrong?" There was a long pause. "Who died?"

John did not answer. When he opened his eyes they were filled with tears that he never shed.

* * *

The next morning, Sherlock was there and John was gripping his shirt so tight that his fingers hurt when he became conscious. The cotton felt paper-thin. The blue irises gleamed paler than usual. He himself appeared as stolid as he always did, even knowing he wasn't real.

"How did they do it?" was the first thing he asked.

"They?"

"The makers of the drug you've been taking every Tuesday. I had always assumed it was some innovative cure for stress or middle-age aches that Mycroft had offered you in return for taking care of his intolerable little brother. It would explain the expensive car, the mysterious couriers."

John chuckled. Of course he would still be seeking information in the final hours before he disappeared. He couldn't leave a mystery unsolved.

"I don't know how they did it. I asked for a list of ingredients and they told me it was classified."

He crinkled his nose in annoyance.

"I think I can direct you to the place they were making it. I remember. Just don't leave until it's time."

"Until it's..." He trailed off, his lips forming a silent 'ah' of realization. Until it was his time to fade away forever. "How did I die in the first place?"

"Suicide. You called me from the rooftop of Barts and confessed to being a fraud. Then you jumped. Right in front of my eyes."

"A fraud?"

John smiled sadly. "You're not a genius. Never were. Everything you knew about everyone was research. You hired an actor to be your villain and solved invented crimes."

The imaginary Sherlock, who was a genius, furrowed his brows in confusion. "I randomly confessed this and committed suicide?"

"No, they were on to you. The press. You couldn't hide it anymore."

He was silent for a long while with that same expression on his face. Eventually John couldn't stand it anymore. "What is it?" he asked.

"That doesn't sound right. Even if I was an ordinary person and I was found out, I don't think it would have driven me to suicide. You all seem to love yourselves too much to have the nerve, especially for such an inferior reason."

"An inferior reason? Your entire career was ruined. You once said you were married to your work; now I don't know how much of that was you and how much of that was...the genius, but, it makes sense."

"No. I would have had to be driven by something much more powerful."

"Like what?"

His gaze returned from the distant place past John's shoulder and became soft as it settled on the eyes of the man he loved.

"Me?" John breathed tentatively, shocked and then indignant. "No, I had nothing to do with it. I never talked to you about it, never- I believed in you right until the very end, right until you said it yourself. And even for a while afterward I didn't believe it. I couldn't. It was too- impossible."

"Impossible," Sherlock repeated softly to himself.

"Too impossible to be true, after all the time I'd known you. That's what I thought at first. Of course I was distraught. But your suicide had nothing to do with me, either way."

"You wouldn't have known it did."

"Are you really trying to figure out the story of your own death? I've told you nothing but the truth."

Sherlock seemed frustrated. "If I was there I would be able to figure it out."

"You were there. You called me, confessed, and made me watch as you leaped to your death."

John wasn't sure if the expression that flashed through Sherlock's eyes just then was realization or concession. He decided not to ask.

"I don't want to spend our last day like this," John said. "Forget about it. Be the Sherlock you've always been." He kissed Sherlock's chin and held him close, savouring the sensation of tangibility as it almost imperceptibly faded away.

* * *

By the time Sherlock decided it was time to go, there was nothing left to touch. John could only see him. He gave directions to the warehouse where he'd met Langdon Faust, not knowing just how accurately he'd recounted them, and let go of a pale hand thin as air.

"Enjoy yourself," he said indifferently.

"I love you," Sherlock replied. "No matter where I am, I love you. Do you understand?"

As ridiculous as it was, John felt as though the message had come from the real one. He couldn't say anything else or he would have broken.

When Sherlock seemed sure that John had decided against killing himself immediately after his departure, he turned and left the flat.

John turned around. He went up the stairs. The place was empty. It looked the same but it was empty. His bed through the open door was empty. He went to the window. Sherlock should have still been visible, walking into the distant streets, but he wasn't. London was empty.

Grey. Empty. Nothing.

* * *

"It's been awhile. Again."

"It has."

"How have you been?"

"Terrible."

"No change, then? What kept you away so long?"

"Nothing."

That would have been an appropriate time for Ella Thompson to sigh in frustration, but for the sake of her job she remained perfectly composed. She had dealt with worse. John Watson acting like a reticent child was just inconvenience.

"Your landlady has been emailing me," she said, sitting back her chair as she skimmed the printouts. "She seems rather worried. Says you've been talking to yourself."

"Not to myself."

"Talking to Sherlock."

John opened his mouth and closed it back up again. He had walked himself right into that one.

"Sherlock has been dead for two years," Ella reminded him gently, and then waited a moment for it to sink in. "It's time to let go."

How horrible that sounded, yet it was the instruction he had been waiting for all along. He was always subconsciously dreading and hoping that someone would force him through the cycle of acceptance, because he couldn't do it himself.

"It won't be happening any longer," he said.

"That's good," she responded, watching him as if to gauge his honesty. She thought he seemed sad; not the constant, monochrome depression she had grown so used to seeing him with, but the sort of peaked sadness that occurred immediately after tragedy. "Do you know what happens next, then?"

"I need to let go."

He buried his face in his hands and let the waves of shame and guilt and regret and pure agony wash over him. He remembered every part of Sherlock - the body, the mind, the persona - and imagined each intangible segment drifting away into a field of white nothing, where they dissolved into idyllic permanence. Then there was only white left behind by the torrent that had passed over, and he wasn't sure how much time had gone by, but he felt clean. Clean to the point of emptiness.

"Feel any better?"

John spent a moment trying to figure out what he was feeling. "No, not really."

"Soon you will. You should be proud of yourself. Many people don't make it this far, or they take much longer."

John didn't feel proud at all. He felt like a traitor, but he was too beyond everything to care.

"I don't know what to do," he said.

"Go home and write a blog entry. Start with that. Get everything out once and for all."

He thought of all the drafts. He thought of all the times with the imaginary Sherlock, the realizations he had come to. Finally, he was free to finish the sentence and let the world think what they would.

* * *

It took less than five minutes. He deleted everything he'd tried to write before and started from scratch. The title was Letting Go. The body went as follows:

It's time I settle some things with myself. I've neglected reality for far too long. I've been depressed, acted terrible, and done regrettable things. I'll be honest now. I loved Sherlock Holmes and always will, no matter who he truly was. He is irreplaceable. Recovering from loss is a long and agonizing process, but from what I hear, it is doable.

Bear with me. He's gone and I'm only just accepting it.

The same day he posted it, he received an overwhelming number of comment notifications and a dozen phone calls. Half of them were a drunken Harry trying to be sympathetic and coming out practically incoherent. All of them John left unanswered. It was funny, really, how nobody cared until something potentially scandalous had come to light.

Maybe they did care. Maybe they just didn't know how to reach out to someone who locked himself out of the outside world, if not physically, then mentally. For god's sake, John didn't even know how to reach out to himself.

He came home each evening to sit in front of a television screen and take in not a square inch of what played out. He slept and he dreamed of Sherlock, and it was not mournful, not the common reminiscent masquerade; it was an idealized Sherlock bursting forth from the white to gallivant in circles around John's picture of reality, all the while perfectly aware of its transience. In the mornings John was angry, and he got into the habit of making himself breakfast to leave it on the table untouched. On the phone he told his now-acquaintances that he would see them and never called back. He was only pretending to live.

For a long time, pretending was all he could manage. Pretending was enough.

* * *

One day he came home in the evening to see Sherlock Holmes sitting in front of the television screen.

This Sherlock had not gallivanted through the white. This Sherlock had never rightfully been there at all. In John's mind, there was a gruesome silhouette of a live man trying to break through the elastic screen of heaven, as he'd been imprisoned there against his will and hidden himself all this time.

"I know what you're thinking. I know all about the drug. I am not a product of the drug. I am real," Sherlock said. Through the elastic screen the words came out as muffled screams which John could not comprehend.

"Damn it," he whispered. "Damn it. Not this again. Not this- I had just-" In desperation, the whispers diverged into whimpers. Not of joy, not of pain, but of fear. Panic. True panic. Loss of self-control. "Damn it!"

Sherlock rose to his feet and reached his hand out, terror and concern in his eyes just the same as that first night when the imaginary him had returned. This time, John did not see it. He could not see it, not through the white screen. He was stumbling backwards as the silhouette reached ever further toward him.

It reached far enough to tear a small corner of the screen from its fastenings. The spirits of the afterlife spilled out through the rift. When they passed through him, their ethereal cells pushed past his with all the impudence of invincibility, knocking the delicate human framework out of balance. The mind lost some of its order. John assessed the events as they happened and realized, with a doctor's acuity, that these were the beginnings of insanity.

He scrambled to his bedroom door and locked himself in just in time to miss Sherlock's reach. John could hear his voice clearly now, through the tear.

"John! John, please don't do anything stupid. I am real. I am real!" The frustration was evident. With the final word came four violent assaults on the door. "I never died. It was a trick, John; let me explain."

John ran to the bathroom and vomited. Then he passed out against the side of the tub.

* * *

When John awoke he was comfortably in bed, and Sherlock was waiting. The bedroom door was lying in two jagged pieces on the side of the room. Mrs. Hudson could be heard crying somewhere in the hall. Oddly enough, John didn't care about either.

Without any greeting or introduction, Sherlock explained the trick. He explained where he'd been for the past three years, what he'd been doing, how he'd been watching over John 'where necessary to confirm his safety'. He paced around the room. He apologized. He demanded a response.

"I suppose, then, if you're real," John said, "You have no recollection of what happened between you and me."

"Between you and the PHENICS-induced resurrection of me? No. There would be no way for me to have witnessed the personal proceedings between you two."

"Clever," he muttered, laughing. "Very clever, Mr. Faust."

"Mr. Faust?"

"The drug's inventor. As far as I know." He slid out of bed and traveled to the window. Even with Sherlock here, London remained empty, just as he had expected.

"What's clever?"

"They've improved the drug like they said they would. I'm still a test subject. This time they just didn't offer me the courtesy of inform-"

Sherlock's hands were on his shoulders, fingers tight, the blue gaze demanding requital. "I am real, John. I don't know how else to prove it to you. That Sherlock..." He shook his head slightly, lips trembling as though his placid mind quaked inside with envy. "You speak of him as though he existed, actually existed, and you must understand that he was a product of your mind. What he did and said was imaginary. He does not and never did exist. John. I do. I need you to believe in me like you used to, before he poisoned your mind. I need you to believe in me the way you did when you thought I died."

Out of love, even though his heart was breaking, John tried. He remembered the feeling but could not call it back. It had been buried in false memories and confusion. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't."

Sherlock dropped his hands and stepped back. Though he stood up straight he seemed to shrink into something small and fragile, a ghost of his past self. A child void of companionship, a prodigy lacking encouragement. A genius without anyone to believe in him, left to wither in the ruins of his own creation.

"You will," Sherlock said, and there was hope in his voice, but it must have come out much weaker than he had intended it to. "You must." Then he went into the other room, and throughout the morning John could hear the soundtrack of tragedy playing out, note by somber note.

* * *

In the morning, Mrs. Hudson served tea for three and sat in the armchair blowing her nose as Sherlock recounted his story a second time. The scene of reunion might have been pleasant, if not for the unnerving fact that Mrs. Hudson could see Sherlock too, making it impossible for him to exist only in John's imagination.

Unless, of course, Mrs. Hudson was a product of his mind as well now.

"Stop zoning out like that. It's disturbing me."

It took several seconds for John to realize that someone was trying to talk to him. "What?"

Sherlock stared at him with concern and an undercurrent of irritation. He didn't repeat himself. Once he had John's attention, he simply turned back to Mrs. Hudson and continued where he'd left off.

If this Mrs. Hudson was fake, where was the real one? Was John having a conversation with an empty living room? Or was the real Mrs. Hudson there, trying to wake him from an overpowering daydream, and failing, and panicking, and...?

"Your thoughts are exceedingly boring, John. What could possibly be going on in there that is so captivating?"

Sherlock was staring straight at him again, searching for answers, because it was beyond frustrating for anything to happen around him that he didn't understand. In these moments it was like Mrs. Hudson didn't even exist. There was just John and Sherlock in an empty world, trying to figure each other out when all the answers were right in front of them.

John glanced at the inanimate outline of Mrs. Hudson, and that was all it took.

"The drug worked by recreating the thing you had lost that was most important to you," Sherlock said. "It altered your perception of reality only enough to make you believe that I was physically there, that my actions existed. It had no effect on the actions of others. I always made way for them. Correct?"

John nodded, and then he wondered just how much time this Sherlock had supposedly spent watching him during his three-year absence.

"You suspect that the drug has been reinserted into your systems unaware, and that it is now creating its own version of Mrs. Hudson, because that's the only way this scene would be possible if I were dead. A drug that powerful cannot exist effectively. It would have to be capable of creating an entire world of its own - a separate dimension, if you will, that your mind singlehandedly designs and lives in, second by second. An undertaking like that would overload your insufficient little brain. At the very least, you would have an inconceivable migraine and pass out every five minutes."

"I think you underestimate the average human brain," John responded.

"I think my brain is more capable of knowing what is true than yours is," Sherlock snapped back, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

That was true, John admitted to himself. Even the fake Sherlock had figured out and accepted that he was fake, in the end.

However, an improved version of the drug would not allow for such a mishap. An improved version of the drug would truly bring Sherlock back to life, even if it meant destroying John's entire reality. It was a terrifying thought - so terrifying that John did not register his terror at the time.

It was perfectly possible for the PHENICS crew to have slipped in and hidden their chemicals in John's food or drinks. They had no misgivings when it came to breaking the law. It was even possible for them to have hidden a chemical which would keep him knocked out cold during the night while they performed another injection.

They were experimenting, and perhaps secrecy was the only way to determine certain results.

When Sherlock tried once more to continue where he'd left off, Mrs. Hudson was wide-eyed in confused turmoil. "Drugs...? What are you boys talking about? John, did you...?" She seemed so distraught that she might have fainted.

"About a year after my presumed death, John agreed to participate in an experiment done by a group of Oxford scientists. He started taking a drug which would alter his perception of reality in such a way that I was brought back to life. Though not the real me. His mental image of me."

She shrunk back into the chair, letting relief swallow her, though puzzlement still surrounded the banks. "Oh John, that means... All those times I thought you'd gone bonkers... You were just..." She blew her nose and proceeded to sob into the wrinkled folds of the tissue. When Sherlock realized that his audience was lost, he looked toward John with the same conflicted expression.

His lips said, "Don't be stupid, John."

His eyes said, "You will believe in me, because I won't fare well if you can't."

And John wanted to believe. He wanted to believe more than anything. It was his mind that refused reason; after all the toying, all the torture, it wanted peace and nothing more. Not even happiness. It had lost what it held most dear, regained it, and lost it again. It rejected another renewal for the sake of normality. For the sake of sanity, which it was losing despite itself.

This Sherlock - this bright-eyed god sitting in the living room, asking acceptance from the one person that mattered, while hiding it from everyone else - this was too real.

While John's heart reached out to what it knew was the truth, his mind yanked in terror the opposite direction.

* * *

"You haven't slept."

"I cannot."

"Sherlock, you haven't slept in nearly a week now-"

"I cannot," he repeated, meeting John's eyes with a violent turn. The neck of the violin was clenched in one hand so tightly it looked as though it would break. "I cannot sleep knowing that you think I am an electric spark in your brain, a neural impulse, a reprocessed memory."

So he was thinking. Thinking of how to make John believe.

"They've already taken down my gravestone; go and see for yourself." He turned back to the window and played a soft, drawn-out note.

John looked down. "I have."

And it made no difference.

"Why...didn't you come back sooner?" John asked. Through all the time spent on explanations, that point had been skipped over entirely. Perhaps John hadn't bothered to ask because he didn't think the explanations were real.

"Your life was in danger."

"And I suppose that's all sorted now?"

It took a moment for him to respond, through gritted teeth. "Yes."

Frustration was the one emotion that Sherlock was always obvious about. He was frustrated because all had not gone according to plan; frustrated because he had expected everything to return to the way it had been before. The situation was much worse than that and he could see it, because for once, feeling had guided his perception past the external.

He was frustrated because he had been wrong when he witnessed John under the effects of the drug and did nothing, thinking its effects would not be long-term.

It was a fatal act of underestimation. He had never once considered that he might be as important to John as John was to him. His ability to assess others' emotions had always been weak in comparison to the other skills, and now he was paying the price for it.

"We always worked together before," John began, in an attempt to appease him. "I understand why you left me out of this one. I'm not happy about it, but I do. I'm still willing to stand by your side. I always have and always will."

"There's a hole in that statement."

"What is it?"

"You do not believe that I am me."

And John realized that, try as he might to truly believe, he was already treating Sherlock differently. In speaking, he was forgetting the key aspects of a conversation with Sherlock Holmes, such as the fact that honesty is impossible to fake. He was talking to Sherlock as though he were a stranger.

If the real Sherlock was here and it still wasn't enough, what could distinguish him? What could trigger assurance strong enough to trump delusion?

John turned to the solution that fake Sherlock himself had come up with. He moved close enough to lower the violin from Sherlock's face and replace its caress with his fingertips, taking the detective by surprise. "Let me try something," he said simply, and then he kissed him, and Sherlock received it but did not move a muscle in return.

When there was space between them again, the first thing Sherlock said was, "How did it happen?"

He recognized that John would not have been daring enough to kiss him if he had never done it before. He was brave enough to run into an open war-zone, to operate on a wound that took one mistake to become fatal, to point a gun at a man's head in the middle of the city and not even tremble; but he was not brave enough to try to kiss Sherlock Holmes out of the blue. Not many would be, even in relative terms. People were most afraid of losing what they cared about.

"I told you I loved you. The next day you bloodied yourself up working on a case, but I was too busy fretting over the fact that you weren't real to take proper care of you, so you kissed me to get me to focus. You did it whenever I was having obvious doubts, and then more and more."

For a moment, Sherlock simply stared at him. Then a momentary expression of fury overtook his features and he surged into the center of the room. Before John had a chance to react to the metal device that was being pulled out from beneath the couch cushions, there was a flurry of gunshots and half a dozen more holes in the wall.

By the seventh shot, John had his hands on the gun, and by the eighth had succeeded in wrestling it from him. "Sherlock, for god's sake, what was that for?!" He emptied what remained in the gun and slammed it down on the table. "And of all the places to hide firearms, the sodding couch?!"

Sherlock did not respond. He took his place in front of the window once again, though he left the violin discarded on the sofa, and started thinking again.

"Sherlock," John demanded, laying a hand on his arm which was quickly snatched away.

"I've had something very important stolen from me."

"So you fuss about it right now, something completely unrelated-?"

"Those memories, John. The development," he said quietly, as though he were thinking out loud, but slowing it down enough for John to understand. "If it was ever to be, those experiences were supposed to be shared by the both of us. Now you have them and I'll never have the chance."

At first, the words didn't comprehend. When John realized that this Sherlock had always considered a further relationship between them a possibility, he was so torn by emotion that he could not decipher the rest, and he walked away to give them both a chance to think.

It wasn't until late in the evening that he returned and took Sherlock's hand in his own, snapping him out of his reverie.

"Come with me," he said, tugging inward from the window.

"Why?" It was more of a bothered statement than a question.

"You can think just as well on the couch as you can here."

So Sherlock lay back against the armrest with John's body resting between his legs and arms hugging his waist, and John wasn't sure whether Sherlock was still thinking or not. Only that if he wasn't, he put up a good act to save himself from having to act differently.

"I'm sorry," John said, closing his eyes, and it was the first time in a year that he felt truly comfortable, even with the guilt perforating.

"It's not your fault," Sherlock replied, anger still riding alongside his voice, and by the time John fell asleep he understood half-consciously that Sherlock blamed himself.

* * *

Running. Cutting corners, vaulting fences, ducking out of sight. Just like the old days. Almost enough to make John forget his doubts.

Since his most recent return, Sherlock had not taken on a case without John by his side. Even if it was one that he knew beforehand would be solved with a single look, he would not approach the crime scene if his partner refused to tag along.

In this particular instance, much more than a look was required. They were unarmed and running for their lives.

"Down there," Sherlock barked through hasty breaths, pushing John forward as he switched directions. "The door!"

"Locked," John responded, followed by a loud swear as their pursuers caught sight of them again. They sprinted around the side of the building to see brights lights illuminating its front lobby. There was no one present except the receptionist.

As they stormed inside John was kind enough to shout, "Pardon us; armed criminals coming through shortly!" to which the receptionist dropped behind her desk with a startled squeak and did not protest to their trespassing.

Past the 'Employees Only' door, there was a long hallway lined with doors into dim rooms. About halfway down John felt himself being shoved through one of them and was ordered to hide. Sherlock disappeared behind a cabinet, so John, in turn, did the same on the opposite side. There were no exits here. It was hide or fight.

The footsteps down the hallway were accompanied by loud bangs as the criminals threw the doors open one by one. There were three of them in masks, facetious and unafraid. They were aware of Sherlock's reputation and intended, like so many others before, to kill him for kicks.

However, they were much more straightforward with this attempt than any had been before, and the detective had come unprepared. There was a serious danger here; John felt it wracking at his gut, warning him of a repeat of the last three years, nearly driving him past the border of madness with just the thought.

Their door was thrown open and two of the men came in to check. One reached John's side of the room first. John grabbed a metal briefcase from the shelf and slapped him in the head with it, but he was only dazed on the floor for a moment before he tried to retaliate.

"God, how thick is your skull?!" John remarked as he caught the man's arm and let his own assault instinct take over. When the black mask was stained burgundy and there was no further reprisal, he pulled the handgun from the man's belt, but by the time he looked up, Sherlock was being held helpless by the third criminal. He had defeated the second with ease but must have been caught by surprise when the third crashed through the window behind him. From the floor the second raised his gun, a final act of retribution-

John didn't think. He shot. And he killed them both.

Sherlock stood speechless and winded, though unfazed by the bullet that had just passed only inches from his head. He crouched down and pulled the mask off of one of the bodies, making a little noise of recognition at the youthful face found underneath.

John nearly choked. "Wh- What is that?"

"A teenage boy. Hired, probably. The real criminals knew we'd put up a good fight and wanted to test just how good it would be."

John stared at the blood trailing down from the hole in the boy's forehead. When Sherlock uncovered the face of the other, it was clean and pale and...afraid.

"You knew?" he asked.

"Their statures were different when they followed us into the alley. They must have switched off partway... Everything was planned."

"Sherlock, I just killed them."

"I would have told you if I thought you were going to shoot."

John crouched down to check the pulse of the one he had pummeled down. He was alive. And also a teenager - likely a rugby player, by his stature. "I wouldn't have shot if you weren't about to get shot."

"That boy wasn't as strong as he looked to be. I was waiting for the opportune moment to break free. The one on the floor was bluffing; he could hardly threaten me, let alone hold a gun straight enough to pull the trigger."

"Sherlock, I just killed two teenage boys."

Sherlock stood up, not registering the panic in John's voice. "Not much different from Afghanistan, is it?"

"Sherlock-" John started again, but he stopped, because the longer he looked at Sherlock, the less sure he was that it was the real thing. That was why he had shot in the first place. He'd doubted Sherlock Holmes.

"John?"

The sirens suddenly became audible outside. The receptionist must have called.

"I just...killed...two boys...to save you. I didn't even think about it."

"I'll explain everything to Lestrade. You won't be held accountable."

"Don't you understand? That doesn't matter! It's the fact that these boys had nothing to do with the crime, and I killed them, for you."

"They are accomplices."

"They could have easily been blackmailed," John stammered, making his way to the door. He felt dizzy, and sick. The way one might feel if their world had been turned inside-out so many times that they weren't sure where imagination and reality disconnected, where memory ended and life began.

"John, where are you going?"

He was sprinting down the hallway toward the back door, crashing against walls and making repeated acquaintance with the floor, but even when Sherlock caught him by the arms his confusion lashed out hard enough to help him escape alone.

He was running through the streets of London, hearing shouting at his back but not understanding it, using pedestrians as bumpers in a kaleidoscopic pinball machine.

He was walking a darkened road, finally forsaken, following a path he thought he would have never needed to use. His throat burned and his brain felt like it had unraveled and taught his intestines how to tie knots. Yet he had control of his senses, and his thoughts were clear as day.

He was standing at the front counter of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, checking himself in as an inpatient for psychosis, and it only took an outline of his military services and a recount of what had happened earlier that evening for them to admit him willingly.

He was sitting on a bed in a locked room, trying to regain touch with reality, but all he could see was Sherlock standing over the dead body of a teenage boy, and soon enough he had his back to the wall and his knees up against his chest, and he was terrified that Sherlock would appear in that very room and claim to be real.

* * *

Life at Bethlem Royal Hospital was incessant and menial. It was exactly what John thought he needed. By request, he spent most of his time in that locked room, unbothered by people. There was a bed, a table and chair by the window, and a bookcase filled with guides and stories thought to be uplifting. He had to push a button by the door to be escorted to the bathroom down the hallway, which was one of the main reasons they had been inclined not to lock him in. The modern era looked down upon treating mental patients as prisoners.

They delivered three meals a day to that room, though almost every day the nurse tried to convince him to eat supper with the other patients. His doctor carried out treatments, both chemical and psychological, which had no effect. John was going nowhere by staying in the hospital, and life was peaceful that way for the first time in years. He was alone, and thus, had nothing to fear. Nothing to figure out. Nothing to accidentally kill.

He had two weeks of peace. Then the nurse informed him that he would be having a visitor who, for his own sake, he was not allowed to reject. He supposed he had known it would happen eventually, but he was still frustrated. He knew of the unavoidable fact that when Sherlock Holmes walked into the room, the stillness shattered.

The detective made a short round to the window, assessing the cell. As he gazed outside he stuck his nose up haughtily, almost as if in disgust. "Why do you submit yourself to this?"

"It's peaceful here."

"Saying that is almost as good as saying that you've lost who you are." He turned to John, and through the thin facade of distaste John could see the concern stronger than he ever could before.

He chuckled. "I am in a mental hospital, aren't I?"

"You must come home."

"I don't want to."

"The treatments haven't had any effect, have they?"

"None at all."

"Do you know why that is?"

"Not a clue."

"It's because you're not sick, John; there's nothing to treat. They keep you here because they have an unoccupied cell which they can use to suck the money out of a perfectly well patient. I want to help you, John, and I've done all I can, but for god's sake, I cannot war against a mental disease that doesn't exist."

John stared at the coat fabric bunched up in a fist at Sherlock's side. He remembered the nights spent wide awake trying to conceive a plan and for the first time failing entirely. Now that he bothered noticing, there were dark shadows under wide and vacant eyes, and hair that hadn't been brushed in days, or had been turned wild by relentless scratching and pacing and burying head in pillows and screaming in frustration.

Then Sherlock was against the bedside where he sat and holding his hand, and he said, "What happened that night with those teenagers - I can assure you I will never let it happen again. It was my fault; it was avoidable. And the memories that were taken from me by the other Sherlock..." He pulled John into his arms, clutching dark blond hair with clear desperation, and pressing cheek against head in what might have been a brief kiss. "They don't matter. Nothing matters if I lose you completely."

In these arms which somehow felt more tangible than he remembered, John noticed his heart quickening its pace, and he breathed in a scent that was much too potent to belong to the fake Sherlock he had known. The scent he had somehow forgotten, that was brisk and welcoming and dangerous all at the same time.

He tried to remember why he didn't believe in the first place. PHENICS had been plausible because it didn't seek to hide the fact that the reincarnation it brought about was only imitation. This Sherlock would not doubt himself for a second. He was completely certain of how he'd almost died and escaped from it while everyone thought otherwise. John still thought it was impossible.

Though Sherlock - the real Sherlock - had always done impossible things, hadn't he?

"Please come home."

John thought of the ineffective treatments he'd been going through. Here it would be even easier to administer the new version of PHENICS without him knowing. If the scientists were already making sales on the black market - which they very well could be, with a drug this capable - they had the money to pay off a willing doctor or two. For the advance of science.

If that was the case, though, staying here would not help him. Peace would become boring after a couple of months, or his money would run out. He needed to return to work, and to the friend that had once brought a spiritless veteran back to the adventure he couldn't live without. Even if he wasn't real.

This was reality now. This was John's reality, whether he wanted to see it otherwise or not.

"Okay," he said. Something about the sigh of relief that fluttered through Sherlock's body convinced John that he had been silently crying.

* * *

When they came through the front door of the flat together, Mrs. Hudson had a paroxysm of joy and likely nearly fainted again. John almost wondered if this experience had been worse on her than it had been on him, especially considering her age. He was thankful for her health.

It was late, so they lay in John's bed together, and while Sherlock remained bewildered by the prospect of anything sentimental, John smiled and guided him with the patience he'd already learned, and things went much smoother this time around.

In the morning he leaned over breakfast and stole their second kiss, to which Sherlock stared at him in barren stupefaction. John scooted his chair closer and leaned in. "Like this," he murmured, and tried again, and this time Sherlock returned the movement with near-perfect imitation of an on-screen romance, because that was the only source he'd had to learn these types of things from.

"Too much," John said, pressing a finger to Sherlock's lips. "Stop thinking. Feel."

The next few times he couldn't quite get it right.

Then they were on a hotel balcony in Paris, and Sherlock was thinking about the case while John wondered at the attraction of the lights and sounds below them.

"While we're here, I want to visit a few places. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. Who knows when we'll ever be back."

"Waste of time."

"Maybe to you," John responded simply, expanding the list in his head. Luxembourg Gardens, Basilica, Notre Dame. Though he suspected the case would take them sprawling illegally through half the places anyway. "Paris is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, you know. And one of the most romantic."

Sherlock glanced over at him but said nothing.

"You're quite the gentleman," John said with a quiet chuckle as he turned to go inside, but Sherlock caught his hand.

"I don't see how those places enhance the experience. This is enough."

"This?"

He paused as if he wasn't sure exactly what he was trying to say, only that he knew it. "You."

You, who follows me anywhere without question, and makes me the priority no matter what the surroundings hold. You, who observes my thoughts and finds them fascinating, while everyone else is filled with jealousy and disgust. You, who will get frustrated but never push me beyond my own wants and needs, who will accept my cold indifference and inscrutability and love me all the same.

John smiled, understanding from a single word. "Best wishes to your mind palace. I'm going to sle-"

Sherlock pulled him in and kissed him and did not try to copy anyone. He was in love and expressing it purely, and suddenly he understood, but he was too caught up in the feeling of John to notice that he understood.

That night, he learned from instinct how to say 'I love you' without saying a thing, and in the morning he woke with John's bare skin against his chest. The solution he'd been searching his mind for on the balcony had long since eluded him, but he felt happier than he had in a long time. Everything was okay.

When John awoke he turned to face Sherlock, who kissed him properly this time, and he almost completely believed.

* * *

Perhaps John was content with believing perpetually in an unsure thing. He could live happily in a world where everything was right again, even if it was all in his imagination. Perhaps.

Though the nagging doubt still existed. Like an undetected virus. In the brightest moments and the darkest hours, the possibility was there, itching for validation, that in everyone else's reality he was still sitting in the bleak asylum cell.

That everything he knew, including Sherlock, was a lie.


End file.
